Exsul
by aadarshinah
Summary: Rodney is on Earth. Iohannes is on Atlantis. No one's very happy about the situation. #28 in the Ancient!John 'Verse. McShep. Sam/Jack. set during "The Return, Part 1"
1. Pars Una

Exsul  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

Pars Una

* * *

Sam watches Rodney shake a handful of acetaminophen into his palm and swallow it with a mouthful of stale black coffee.

He makes a face and drops both pill bottle and mug to the metal table with an absent, tired clatter. Both are oversized and both, by the sounds of it, are nearly empty. "Do you have a fresh pot? Or at least a warm one? We're on Earth. Supply really shouldn't be an issue here, but it always seems to be. I'm fairly sure the particle physicist in the lab at the end of the hall has been making off with the good beans - you know the one, the one from Texas with the stereotypical big belt buckles and leather cowboy boots. I've not had time to set up surveillance, but I'm sure it's him. He's got a shifty look about him."

She bites her lower lip. It's worse than she thought. "How many of those have you had today?"

"Cups of coffee?" he asks without looking at her, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. Whether it's a caffeine headache he's feeding or caffeine withdrawal he's fighting off, she can't say for sure. "Eight? Nine? Ten maybe? I don't know. No more than usual. Why? What does it matter?"

"I meant pills."

"It's not anywhere near enough to kill me, if that's what you're worried about."

"It's not."

"Well," Rodney says dryly, finally glancing up. His eyes are bloodshot, with bags enough to fill Denver International's baggage claim twice over, and that's just the most obvious sign of his dishabille. To say he looks like death warmed-over would be unfair to the dead. It's probably best to say that he looks less like the smartest man in two galaxies and more like someone whose been living under a bridge of late, "as much as I appreciate your concern, it's unwarranted. I'm fine."

"No, you're not. You look like you haven't slept for days and you haven't left your lab since you got here. People are saying that you seem listless, distracted even."

A scowl quickly forms on his face. "So now you have people spying on me."

"No, not at all. But several of our colleagues and research assistants have come to me with their worries"

"'Proditores'," he murmurs under his breath.

"I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that."

Waving a hand tiredly, "It's not important. Just like my sleeping habits."

"I only bring it up because I'm concerned about you, McKay. I know what it's like to lose someone you care about-"

"I've not 'lost' anyone," he says, fervent and irascible (and somewhat closer to the Rodney McKay she knows, not this  
haggard and stripped-down version that's been making the rounds ever since the Expedition returned to Earth five weeks ago. Sam never thought she'd miss the blunt and brash McKay she'd met years ago, the one that flirted with her and insulted her in the same breath, but this version is just 'wrong'. Wrong in ways she doesn't have words for. "John's 'fine'. He's just on Atlantis. Where I would be if the IOA wasn't blind to everything but their cost-benefit analyses and their petty, Earth-centric politics."

"Yes, yes, I know," Sam says, quickly putting up her hands in the universal sign of 'I come in peace.' "I know John's alright, but he's also three million light years away. And that kind of separation can be difficult for anyone, even if everything else is fine between them."

"Your point?"

"That you don't have to go through this alone. There are plenty of people at Area 51 you can talk to-"

"I don't need to talk to a shrink."

"It doesn't have to be a shrink. It can be anyone - friend, colleague, bartender; whoever you want. I know in the past when Jack's gone missing-"

Rodney stands abruptly, letting his chair skitter back with a clatter. "All of my paperwork has been turned on time, All my projects are progressing at a faster-than-anticipated rate. The day that fails to be true, then - and only then - do you get the right to lecture me about my personal life." He grabs his coffee mug and industrial-sized bottle of acetaminophen. "Now, if you don't mind, I have 'real' work to get back to."

"Alright, but-" she sighs, but it's too late. Rodney's already out the door.

She sighs again and glances at her watch. It's only 1422 MDT. Far too early to home but far too late for her to be thinking about anything else. Sam stands up and pushes in both chairs. Something, somewhere, is bound to need fixing, and that should occupy her until its time to go home.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, she's eight hundred miles east and walking into the SGC's main astrodynamics lab with a cup of coffee she probably doesn't need in one hand a sugar cookie she definitely doesn't in the other. But the holiday season is upon them and, even in a place as normally removed from the passage of time as the base, goodies of all kinds are appearing in every corner. After being faced with platters of Christmas cookies and bowls of Santa-shaped chocolates, her self-control is only so strong.

Besides, what's the point of saving the world if she can't have a cookie every now and then?

"Hey Bill," she says, wiping the crumbs off her lips. "Walter said that you had something you wanted to show me."

"Colonel Carter!" he starts, quickly X'ing out of several screens on his computer. "I thought you were still in Area 51 and wouldn't be back for hours."

"Unfortunately McKay is proving to to be more unreasonable than usual."

"Doctor McKay can be very stubborn."

Sam hums. The was one word for it. Intractable is another. Bastard a third. (Heartsick, a forth, is probably the best fit at the moment, and she'd almost feel sorry for Rodney if the third didn't describe him so well.) "So, what was it you wanted to show me?"

"Oh, yes. I was running some tests on the new Oracle satellite system and noticed something odd."

"Odd?"

"More curious really," he says, directing her attention to another workspace eagerly.

"Curious? How so?"

"Well, I'm picking up sensor ghosts, mostly. Not all the time either, just every now and then, on no fixed pattern that I've been able to determine so far."

"What kind of sensor ghosts?" Sam asks, leaning over his shoulder to look at the readings. There's nothing showing up at the moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, especially if it's not really a sensor ghost.

"That's just it - I can't tell. Something small, that for sure, hanging about near the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point. A F-302, probably, or a runabout."

"A runabout?"

"It's a type of small shuttlecraft from 'Star Trek'-"

"I know where it's from." Why all the men on this base seem to assume she's completely unfamiliar with the SyFy channel and it's offerings is beyond her. "I was just surprised. Even if Oracle isn't working perfectly, we should be able to pick up a ha'tak or Ori battleship anywhere in the system. And, since we're not, you've got to wonder how such a small that size might have gotten here on its own."

"Well, I'm definitely not picking up anything that could be a potential mothership anywhere in system, just the runabout - though I suppose there 'are' plenty of places a mothership could hide if they know where the blind spots in our sensors are. Or in the shadow of one of the gas giants, maybe. Or out in the Kuiper belt if it had strong enough shields..."

"Let me take a look at it."

Flustered, Bill protests, "There's nothing there now."

"I meant the records of the old ghosts."

"Oh, yes, right. Of course. That makes senses." There's an awkward moment in which Bill does nothing. Then, noting her pointed look, "I guess I should probably get those pulled up for you."

"Yeah," Sam says, holding back a sigh as she reminds herself Bill really can be an excellent scientist when he puts his mind to it. "That'd probably be a good idea."

* * *

It takes her a long time to realise that the sensor ghost is more than a ghost. Too long, actually. At first she wants to say its because she's not had that much of a hand in the Oracle project - most of her time has been spent studying Arthur's Mantle, trying to track down the location of the Sangraal - and, as such, is unfamiliar with the system. But, the further Sam digs, the more certain she becomes that someone's actively trying to hide something at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point.

But who? And what? It's hard to tell. Oracle is a very new program, only having gone online in the last two weeks, but its one that involves dozens of governments, hundreds of satellites, and nearly a thousand personnel.

Sam had come up with the idea on Atlantis after hearing to John talk about the orbital Maginot lines that the Ancients had put in place during the Siege: a series of hundreds of mines, satellites, and space stations all designed with the sole purpose of slowing the Wraith's inexorable advance. After nearly two hundred years of war, all had been destroyed, but she had liked the concept. It would be impossible to replicate in the Sol system, of course, without modifying existing treaties on the placement of nuclear warheads in outer space, but they could at least take the idea of a space surveillance system and apply it to their own planet.

With the Ori Crusade advancing at a frightful rate, it had been easy to convince the Secretary of the Air Force to turn the Space-Based Infrared System that had grown out of Reagan's Star Wars initiative over to the SGC. Where SBIRS had been designed for missile warning and detection on Earth, as Oracle they had turned it's capabilities outwards to detect alien threats-

-at least, that had been the plan. Sam had been forced to hand the project over to Area 51 to keep from being spread too thin. McKay, a veteran of the the original Brilliant Eyes project, had taken over for her. Using the knowledge of Ancient technology he'd picked up on Atlantis, he'd manage to extend the sensor range of their existing satellites and program patches that would allow for better information sharing between the military satellites they'd repurposed for this reason from various IOA member nations. It was far from perfect and would eventually be replaced by a network of dedicated satellites, but it would do until then.

And now someone was actively trying to hide 'something' in the shadow of the Moon. It could be something as simple as a foreign power trying to hide some asset they don't wish the rest of the IOA to know about, or as dire as some convert to Origin attempting to mask the next Ori beachhead. Thousands of possible threats lay between.

Sam runs a hand across her face and reaches for the coffee.

Which is, of course, when Vala chooses to march into her office, clap her hands together loudly, and declare loudly, "It's two o'clock in the morning."

The coffee cup skitters out of her hands and slips off the desk, managing to avoid most of her research but not her pants. Luckily, it's only lukewarm at this point, but pants covered in lukewarm coffee are still about as far from enjoyable as it can get.

"And this is why we don't do science in the small tiny hours of the morning. C'mon. Leave that for the burly young men with mops." She tugs on the sleeve of Sam's jacket, dragging her out into the hall. "Let's get you in in some dry clothes and into bed, where all good little scientists belong at ungodly hours like this one."

Sam blinks. She's not entirely sure what's happening. "What are you doing up? I thought you said it was 0200."

"Well," Vala drawls, now pushing her towards the elevator bank, "I 'was' asleep." She gestures with one hand at her pink-and-yellow pyjamas and mussed pigtails, using the other to usher Sam into the elevator. "But Daniel's still up, and for some reason he was talking to that bald Master Sergeant, the one with the glasses, and 'he' mentioned that you were still in your lab. Which Daniel took as an excellent reason to call down to 'my' room and wake 'me' up so 'I' could make sure you got some sleep before tomorrow. I, of course, asked why he couldn't do it and he said something about Camelot that didn't make much sense, so I got the impression that he's not going to be getting much sleep either tonight."

"And you're not drag him out of his lab and force him to go to bed?"

"Nope."

"That seems awfully unfair."

"Well, mostly because it's that I don't care enough 'what' Daniel does or does not do in his free time anymore. But you're also far more more reasonable when it comes to these sorts of things. Do you know," she adds, aghast, as the elevator doors open onto one of the residential levels, "that I've done everything short of march naked into his office before trying to get him to leave and it's never worked, not once?"

"Daniel can be stubborn."

"'Daniel' can be stubborn?" Vala repeats, sniggering as she drags her down the hall. "Try 'everyone on this planet'. That's the problem with Earth. No one here knows to have fun. You know what we should do after we get you in pants without coffee stains on them? Have a movie night - or movie morning, whatever the chronologically correct turn of phrase is. I've got the latest season of that show with the improbably handsome brothers and the even more improbable story lines on tape, or, if you're not in the mood for that, Teal'c left his entire collection of 'Star Wars' with me while he's on Chulak."

"How about a rain check?" Now that she thinks about it, she's actually exhausted. All she wants to do is sleep, preferably in her own bed, but since she doesn't quite trust herself to drive in her current state, that's not likely to happen.

"If you insist. But it 'will' happen. Preferably at your place, with lots of popcorn and lots of those fruity drinks with the tiny umbrellas."

"We'll see," Sam smiles tiredly at her as she's ushered into Vala's quarters. They're bright and cheery and full of personality in the way most the accommodations aren't, almost like a real apartment. Almost.

"What were you working on that was so important you forgot to go home anyway?" she asks, riffling through her dresser drawers. "You're usually pretty good about remembering when it's time to leave this little underground fortress of yours and escape into the world of malls and movies and takeout pizza for awhile." She tosses Sam a pair of Alice blue pyjama bottoms and a worn University of Chicago sweatshirt that had probably at one time belonged to Daniel. "Also, weren't you supposed to go to Area 51 to have this same conversation with McKay yesterday?"

Sam starts changing. "I'm well aware of the irony. Though I've got to say I'm still better about it than he is. When I got there he was mainlining coffee and painkillers like there's no tomorrow. I'm worried about him."

"Which just goes to show that you Tau'ri scientists need to leave your dark underground holes more often. I mean, what's the point of trying to protect your planet from the Ori at all if you don't take advantage of some of it's perks every now and then? By which I mean preferably once a week, with lots of popcorn and even more alcohol."

"In all honesty, I don't think McKay cares about the Ori or even Earth anymore. At some point in the last two-and-a-half years, Atlantis became his home. And now he's furious with us for taking him away."

"Yes, well, with a boy toy like Colonel Sheppard, who wouldn't be? I mean, have you seen his ass-"

"Vala!"

"What?" she nettles, bouncing into the exact centre of her bed and crossing her legs. "He's an attractive man. A little too pretty for my usual tastes, but certainly worth making an exception over should the occasion ever arise. Granted, we'd probably kill each other before we made it a week, god, but the sex would be-"

-something Sam never wants to hear about, fantasy or otherwise. (The goa'uld Vala had once been host to, Qetesh, had been known amongst the System Lords as 'the Mistress of All the Gods' and rather than repress these memories, as Sam had done with Jolinar's, Vala had chosen to embrace them. This, while possibly healthier, has too often led to her sharing such detailed descriptions of her daydreams that they've left Sam unable to look at certain coworkers for weeks without turning beet red.)

Desperate for a change of topic, she says quickly, "Maybe you should talk to him?"

"Colonel Sheppard? I would, but its not like Atlantis has dialled Earth since the Ancients took it back, which makes it a little difficult, darling. Though we were having the most 'fascinating' discussions via email before about-"

Sam cuts her off there. "I meant Doctor McKay."

"Oh," Vala says, sinking back onto her small mountain of pillows. "Him. I suppose I could, though I don't think it would do much good. I don't think he likes me very much."

"He likes you a hell of a lot more than he likes me at the moment. If you could just do what you were saying earlier and drag him out of his lab for a little while, I think everyone in the Program would be immensely grateful."

Vala appears to consider this.

Sam ups the ante. "I'll give you my credit card."

"Done."


	2. Pars Dua

_Exsul_

An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Dua_

* * *

__Evan takes to spending his time aboard 'Aurora' following what Sheppard has taken to calling The Second Exodus. Technically he's been granted commission in the Lantean Guard as a 'navarchus' - the rough equivalent of an O-5 or O-6, - which keeps him amongst the highest ranking officers on Atlantis, but Captain Helia, the city's new military commander, seems to have little use for him.

No, it's better by far just to stay with Rory, teaching himself how to operate all of her secondary systems and letting her practice her 'elocution' by reading aloud to him from Ancient books she finds in 'Lantis' database. Sure, she can sometimes get petulant and insist he read to her instead - to which Evan has finally relented, though he feels somewhat more ridiculous than usual when he reads aloud to an empty room. And, yes, she's a bit of a brat when it comes to certain things - she insists, like the rest of the Ancients, on calling him Argathelianus for one, and she also derives a certain pleasure from randomly giving him minor electric shocks. But it's a lot better than having to deal with the Ancients, who give arrogance a whole new meaning.

Don't get Evan wrong: he loves Atlantis and Colonel Sheppard is the best commanding officer he's ever had, even if he's made the somewhat unusual lateral move into adoptive fatherhood. But the other Ancients... They're 'alien' in a way the Colonel never was. They're cold and callous and even a little bit cruel, so wrapped up in their technological and evolutionary superiority that other species barely ding on their radar as sentient at all. It becomes more and more obvious the more time he spends around them that this people - the Terrans, the Tau'ri, whatever one wants to call them - have never been anything more than science experiments to them-

-and he has absolutely no idea why Sheppard ever treated them any differently. Long before he ever Ascended, he was a god among men. Had the Colonel wanted, he could have reached out his hand and taken control of Pegasus long before Ladon Radim came to him with the idea of the Confederation. Yet he hadn't and even now he's little more than a figurehead, serving to unite people with nothing in common but their worship of the Ancestors and their fear of the Wraith. Despite his newly realized divinity, Sheppard expends a tremendous amount of effort to appear human. And Evan has 'absolutely no idea why'.

Just as he has no idea why the Colonel so hard to keep him here.

Just as he has no idea why the Colonel didn't fight harder to keep Doctor McKay on Atlantis.

Just as he has no idea why the Colonel let Captain Helia name herself 'praetor', or allow her to go about as if 'she' and not Colonel Sheppard is in charge of Atlantis.

All Evan knows for sure is that life on Atlantis following The Second Exodus is confusing and emotionally draining. Which is why he spends as much time aboard 'Aurora' as he can get away with, which is surprisingly a lot.

Which is also why, when everything finally comes to a head, it finds him on 'Aurora's' Bridge, bare feet dangling over one of the arms of the Captain's Chair, reading aloud from Robert A. Heinlein's 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."

* * *

"'...like a machine with proper negative feedback,'" he reads. "'A good line marriage is immortal; expect mine to outlast me at least a thousand years - and is why shan't mind dying when time comes; best part of me will go on living.'"

He pauses to turn the page and is surprised when Rory, who'd been listening with rapt attention to the story, suddenly makes a sharp, high-pitched noise that almost has Evan falling out of his chair. "What the hell, Rory?"

/Some-one just came a-board./

"The Colonel?" it isn't unusual for Sheppard to stop by, but usually he comes later in the day, not to mention that Rory usually sounds far more pleased about it.

/No, not 'Pa-ter'. Some-one else. They had to use an over-ride code to en-ter./

One of the Ancients then. "Do you know who?"

There is a pause. /'Ma-ter' says he is To-mas Nor-ens Nau-ta./

"And which one is that again?"

Rory spares the time to give him a long, exasperated sigh in the middle of her freak-out. /He's the bor-ing one./

"Yeah, that doesn't help me much, 'delicia'," Evan snorts, the Ancient word falling easily from his tongue after so many weeks of being forced to use the language if he needs to speak with most of the city's new population.

/He's the 'real-ly' bor-ing one. The one who marr-ied 'Pa-ter's' old 'a-ma-tor', Nic-ol-a-a de Lu-er-a Pas-tor, af-ter they broke up be-cause 'Pa-ter' did-n't want to have a ba-by./ She seems to bite her metaphorical lip as Evan's eyes widen at this new piece of information. /We don't think we were sup-pos-ed to tell you that part./

"I'll keep that in mind," he says delicately, closing the book and looking for what he did with his shoes. He has the vague idea that he might not have bothered putting them on at all this morning, having not planned to leave the ship at all today, but Evan hopes he's just remembered wrong. He doesn't fancy the idea of dealing with Sheppard's ex's widower barefoot, especially if the guy is who he thinks he is. He has his sidearm, at least - a proper Beretta, not the useless stunners the Ancients use; - that makes him feel at least mildly prepared to deal with the situation.

/'Pa-ter' does-n't like talking a-bout Be-fore./

"I've noticed that."

/Why?/

Evan pauses his search, as fruitless as it likely is, and glances at the overhead. "I dunno. That's something you'll have to ask him."

/We 'have',/ she wails, her tantrum turning from fear to frustration. /We have asked 'Ma-ter' and 'Pa-ter' and you, but no one will tell us 'any-thing'. E-ver. We don't know why the Ter-rans left and we don't know why our sis-ter was left be-hind and no one will tell us any-thing. We know peo-ple al-ways leave, but no one will tell us 'why'."

"It's complicated," he sighs.

/We are not a child any-more, Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us! We think we would be a-ble to un-der-stand, if only ev-er-y-one would let us./

Evan resists the urge to bang his head against the bulkhead, if only because Rory would probably take that the wrong way. And because Tomas Norens Nauta is bound to show up any second. Giving up on his search for shoes, he suggests, "How about I try to explain it later? After we deal with whatever Tomas wants."

The ship twitters in agreement for one happy instant before the worry returns, her song dancing about like a violinist trying to find the right key. /What do you think he wants?/

"Probably to tell us how much he doesn't like Colonel Sheppard again."

/That's sil-ly,/ she tells him, as if the very idea is riddiculous. /'Pa-ter' is the kind-est, best man in the whole wide un-i-verse. On-ly bad peo-ple don't like him and 'Pa-ter' would nev-er let bad peo-ple near 'Ma-ter'./

Five years old, Evan decides. He's pseudo-married to a sentient spaceship with all the maturity of a five-year-old, who may or may not also be considered his adopted sister in certain jurisdictions. "When did my life get so weird?" he wonders aloud.

/You're not weird, Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us,/ Rory assures him, still using her 'you're being silly' voice.

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Whatever you say, 'delicia.'

Which is, of course, when company arrives.

"I will never understand," Tomas says derisively, walking through the open doorway without further greeting, as if 'he' owns the place, "why 'pastores' feel the need to speak aloud to their charges. I have been made to understand that it is possible to converse with the 'intelligentiae artificiales' mentally. Certainly it would be much less disruptive for all involved if you conversed that way?"

Evan gives him a tight smile. It seems like he's remembered the right Ancient after all. "I think we do it because it seems less like schizophrenia this way."

Tomas' voice drips with disdain. "Personally, I believe that anyone who goes to the extreme of technologically augmenting themselves for the sole purpose of communicating with an 'intelligentia artificialis' is mentally unbalanced to begin with." His eyes sweep the room, searching it for faults, and finally land upon Evan's bare feet.

Evan stiffens and reminds himself that he's got to spend the rest of his life with these people. It's better to be polite now than start a fight now that will only make things worse with Tomas and the others. Still, "Wasn't your wife a 'pastor'?" he asks, more than a hint of snideness to his tone.

"Icarus pressured her into it, I am sure."

"Naturally," he snorts, having not heard anything quite so ludicrous in his life. This Nicolaa person, whoever she was, had to have loved Atlantis to become a 'custodia' in the first place and probably had a good idea what she was getting into before she had the surgery to become a 'pastor'. The idea that anybody could be talked into it is absurd. Almost as absurd as the idea of Sheppard ever dating anyone who might be talked into anything. "Was there something you needed?"

"Did Icarus not tell you?" the Ancient says, walking into the center of the Bridge and running a hand along the top of the Captain's Chair. Tomas is not 'custodia' and so cannot hear the loud noise of protest Rory makes at this, but Evan can, as he can the even louder, indignant squawk she makes when he takes a seat there.

"Helia," Tomas continues, "has decided that are resources are too limited to allow one of our last 'pastores' to place his life at risk captaining a 'linter'." You are to be reassigned to the city's defense cadre, where your particular... skill set... will be of greater use to the community in the advent of an attack by the Wraith. You will be allowed to retain your rank but-"

-but by this point Evan's long stopped listening. Rory is screaming in protest, her words unintelligible through the roar of blood in his ears and the volume of her own frantic song, but he can guess their meaning easily enough.

He can guess the meaning of all of this easily enough. Helia can't get rid of him, but she can shuffle him out of the way. Somehow his lazing about 'Aurora' hasn't marginalized him enough - or maybe she just wants him somewhere where she can keep a better eye on him, trying to keep ahead of whatever conspiracies she thinks he and Sheppard are weaving to oust her from her stolen throne.

"Icarus," Evan says carefully, mindful to call the Colonel by a name Tomas would acknowledge, "has been 'pastor Atlantis' for thousands of years. Surely he's the best candidate for the job, especially since he doesn't need to eat or sleep anymore."

Tomas' nose wrinkles, as if he's left three-day-old roadkill under the Captain's Chair. "Your precious father is an Abomination. I do not know which is the bigger crime: that Icarus was made 'pastor' as young as he was, or that Ianus was never punished for preforming the surgery. Either way, it has allowed Atlantis' 'intelligentia artificialis' to have undo influence over him all his life. The fact that he remained while the rest of the survivors sought refuge on Terra is proof enough of this. Undoubtably it will cause complications again in the future."

His jaw's clenched so tightly it's a miracle that his words, "My people would call what he did brave," is intelligible at all.

"Yes, well, that is one of the many reasons why your species is not yet evolved enough to take a proper place amongst the stars. It is thinking like that and people like him that destroys civilizations."

"If you ask me," Evan says, his fists clutched as tightly as his jaw at his sides, "the only people 'destroying civilizations' are you and your Captain. You've been here a full month and done absolutely 'nothing' to fight the Wraith that 'your' kind unleashed on this galaxy in the first place."

"Just because we chose not to share our plans with you, Argathelianus, does not mean that we have not made them. Your reassignment is but the first step towards this goal," Tomas informs him, seemingly unbothered by Evan's obvious displeasure. Or anything at all. He's as still as a statue as he sits in the Captain's Chair - or would be, if there was anything about him worth sculpting. It's almost impossible to take him seriously, if only because it's almost impossible to pay him any real attention at all under normal circumstances.

But these are not normal circumstances.

"And who does Helia intend to replace me?" he asks, his voice calm despite himself, despite the truly epic outburst Rory is carrying on in Evan's head. He's surprised it's not brought the Colonel running yet - unless he's busy battling other intrigues elsewhere, in which case both they and their plans, such as they are, for the Expedition's eventual return are in serious trouble.

Tomas raises a single eyebrow. "Myself, of course."

Rory doesn't like this. Rory doesn't like this at all. She immediately makes her displeasure known, increasing the intensity of the overhead lighting and messing with the air filters so that they sound like Marley's ghost in a drama school production of 'A Christmas Carol', complete with the howls of the damned - though those might be more slasher movie than holiday special.

/No,/ she sobs over and over again until her words start to blur together into one long, desperate plea for Evan not to leave her. /Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us, you can-not leave us! You are our 'mar-i-tus'. We need you. 'Ma-ter' al-read-y has 'Pa-ter'. You are ours, not hers. Ours, ours, ours!/

Evan's going to have burst eardrums by the end of this, but he doesn't care. Instead, ignoring the light show going on around them, he contends, "I don't think Rory's going to go for that."

"That," Tomas asserts, "is irrelevant." He looks around the Bridge (at the too bright lights, at the sparks flying from the consoles forced to deal with too strong a power surge, at the copy of 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' on the deck by the Captain's Chair; at Evan's own bare feet) with disfavour, as if it's Evan's 'unseemly Terran influences' that are causing Rory to act this way and not her own loathing of some unknown Ancient (someone who claims to have piloted her sister-ship, Tria, but not spoken out when they abandoned her in the void between galaxies; someone who hates her makeshift family for reasons that, to her, must seem absurd) trying to make her give up something she doesn't want to lose. "'Aurora' is a 'linter'. It will do as we command."

"She's a sentient being!"

"It is a tool. A tool to be used like any other."

His Beretta is in his hand before he even makes the conscious decision to draw it. "Get off this ship."

"Stop being such a child," Tomas rebukes.

Rory, obviously thinking this comment is directed towards her, sends another surge of electricity to the already over-bright lights. The effect is like a small bomb going off and has Evan instinctively bringing his hands up to cover his eyes, the clatter of his gun falling to the deck unheard over the shattering of glass and hissing of fire suppressant systems activating.

When he finally lowers his hands, half the consoles on the Bridge are on fire. The rest are shattered and broken, their displays flickering in and out in time with the damaged wiring. His eyes sweep across the room, taking in the damage, and falter when they reach the centre of the Captain's Chair.

Evan knew that Rory was capable of sending electric shocks through her circuits, but he had no idea she was capable of sending the kind of voltage needed to do 'that' to a person. If Tomas - or, rather, what's left of him - can still be called a person:

His skin is black and charred with eschar. His hair has been burned clear away. Parts of his clothes are still smouldering, seemingly unaffected by the chemical suppressants. In the places where his bare skin touched the Chair, the burns extend all the way to the bone.

The smell is horrendous.

/You are our 'nav-arch-us',/ she announces happily as Evan's busy emptying his stomach of everything he's ever eaten. /We will have no oth-er./

* * *

The Colonel shows up half-an-hour later, after most the fires have gone out and the smell's dissipated enough for Evan's stomach to start to settle provided he keeps not looking at the corpse in the Captain's Chair.

"I never thought I'd hear myself say this," he says lightly, surveying the damage, "but I think this qualifies as overkill, 'delicia'."

Rory bristles defensively. /He was go-ing to take Ar-gat-hel-i-an-us a-way from us./

"I know, 'delicia'. I know. Just," Sheppard sighs tiredly, "maybe try to tone it down a little next time?"

/But-/

"You could've hurt Lorne too."

/We would 'nev-er' hurt him./

"Not intentionally, maybe, but it still could've happened. That's why you've got to be careful."

Contrite, /Yes 'Pa-ter',/ she promises.

"That's all I ask." Then, turning his attention towards Evan, "You 'are' okay, right, Major?"

Evan nods. It's all he trusts himself to do at the moment. (He may be an Air Force officer, but he's still 'human'. There are some things nobody can see without being affected - that's his story and he's sticking to it.)

Sheppard crouches down beside him, looking genuinely concerned. (He knew that the Colonel would take this whole adoptive parenthood thing way too seriously.) "Y'sure, Evan? 'Cause you're looking kinda pale."

"I'll be alright," he manages. (Evan's not sure how. His stomach is still insisting that it will find something to empty itself of if he gets any fancy ideas about moving to fast or breathing too deeply.)

"That's what I like to hear. Y'think you'll be able to pilot her - after I clean this mess up, of course - 'cause this? This is 'not' going to make Danelia happy and she's got a tendency to act rashly when she's unhappy. No, you're going to have to disappear for a while..."

"New Athos?" he suggests.

"I was thinking more along the lines of Terra," the Colonel says with a wicked grin. "I'll be a little ahead of schedule, but I think Rodney'll enjoy the surprise."


	3. Pars Tria

_Exsul_  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Tria_

* * *

**17 November, 2006 / 14 Days After The Second Exodus - Area 51, Terra, Avalon**

Rodney closes his eyes and let's his head fall heavily against the wall behind him. He's half-sitting on, half-sprawled across the inexplicable couch his office's previous occupant had seen fit to cram into the space behind the desk. He's balancing a laptop on one knee, but he's ignored it for so long that the battery's run out, leaving the room as dark as only a tiny, windowless space carved out of the warren of tunnels beneath a secret research facility can be.

The darkness is welcome.

The silence is not.

Maybe silence is the wrong word. His lab is never quiet, not during the day at least, when his minions do nothing but go on and on about the most ridiculous things (the latest celebrity power couple and Malcolm Tunney's newest paper being two of their favourite topics this week). Even at night, when the sycophants are gone and he should be as well, the lab is full of machine noises. But it's just not the same. It's not music. It's not alive.

The absence of Atlantis' perpetual song is more than just unfortunate side effect of the Expedition's return to Earth: it's a physical pain. His head hurts worse than any caffeine headache he's ever had, almost to the point where he's unable to concentrate on anything else but the music's absence. Rodney's found that acetaminophen helps somewhat, as does a vast iTunes library, but neither solution is perfect, even in combination. At the rate he's going, he's going to give himself liver failure before much longer - that is, if the sleep deprivation doesn't get him first.

He feels pathetic. He's Rodney McKay, Ph.D., Ph.D.; the smartest person in a two galaxies. He found a way to recharge ZPMs out of three lines scribbled into the margin's of an Ancient's notebook and built the device to do so out of ten-thousand-year-old scraps. Every Naquadah-enhanced warhead in Earth's arsenal (until the Mark VIII) has been built from his designs. When the Stargate Program goes public, he's going to win so many Nobels he's going to have to use them as bookends just to have places for them all. But he does, and it's becoming something that's starting to to attract his sycophants' notice.

Rodney doesn't even have the energy to be annoyed about it. His head 'hurts' and he's not slept in 'days' and all he wants is for this to be 'over' so he can go 'home'.

Damn John and his insistence that he 'needs' him here, on Earth, where he'll be able to go through 'Tria's' databanks and find out what the others are hiding without interference from Helia and her crew. John's plan - for Lorne to use Rory to bring 'Tria' to him on Earth, where he can work in peace and, eventually, take Rodney and everyone else who wants to return to Atlantis back - had made sense at the time, but he'd somehow failed to take into account just how 'long' everything would take.

How many months will it take for Lorne to be able to bring 'Aurora' to Earth without attracted unwanted suspicion from the Ancients? Would the city's new military commander, Danelia Ival Helia Navarcha, even allow him to remain in command of the ship? If she stripped him of that post, it could take 'years' for the Major to earn her trust enough to regain the position and even longer before he'd be able to take Rory out of Pegasus.

Rodney doesn't think he has that long. He gives himself six months before his work starts to suffer, less than that if someone in power becomes suspicious.

If they become suspicious, they'll pull him out of Area 51.

If they pull him out of Area 51, chances skyrocket that they'll find the lacuna he's written into Oracle, the one that would allow spaceships with certain specific shield frequencies to pass deep inside Earth's defense network.

If they find the blind spot he's written into the satellite surveillance system, they'll know that he's planning for the arrival of an Ancient warship; if they know that much, they'll be ready for Rory and 'Tria' when they come. A direct confrontation between the Pegasus and Earth is the last thing either side needs right now - to say nothing of the alternative, which has the words 'alien invasion' written all over it in big, black, one-inch newsprint.

Or maybe not. Maybe the drugs are already messing with him and his logic is as addled as his brain. It's only acetaminophen - well, that and the occasional diazepam from the stash Carson had given him last time he'd visited, claiming it would help with the 'agoraphobia' that was keeping him holed up in his lab. (Apparently it's actually an issue for some of the longer-serving members of the Expedition. He can understand it too - Earth is almost unbearably crowded after a place like Atlantis - but it's not the reason he stays.)

Maybe Rodney can find a different way to take the edge off, one that doesn't involve copious amounts of pills and concerned looks from pimply-faced teenagers with the ink still wet on the sheepskins they'd managed bribe budget cut-stricken universities into giving them. He's a genius, so it shouldn't be hard, even if the headaches and the exhaustion and the constant sense of 'emptiness' make it hard to concentrate somethings.

Or maybe he just needs to sleep. Sleep is good. It's the best, really, even if lately it only brings nightmares of a silence so complete he wakes up clawing at his ears, that is, when he manages to sleep at all. The insomnia's terrible, despite his exhaustion, and it's a rare night that he actually manages to fall asleep...

* * *

**18 November, 2006 / 15 Days After The Second Exodus**

The next morning, calls himself every kind of idiot in the book (and a few that he invents just for the occasion). Then Rodney queues up a playlist of songs that all sound almost, but not quite like Atlantis. With the music piping through the smallest of the laboratory spaces they've given him and a pot of strong black coffee brewing in the corner, he can almost pretend he's back where he belongs instead of the windowless cavern in the tunnels beneath Area 51 the IOA has stuck him in, the one one that's always cold and dark despite the Nevada sun beating down overhead and which reminds him far too much of the Genii's underground warrens for comfort.

Rodney doesn't know much about the nanoids that make communication with AI's possible. John, for whatever reason, won't let him study them. But he 'does' know that the neural network that had existed between 'Aurora's' crew while they were in stasis had operated on a similar frequency to whatever the nanoids used to talk to the city, and he has plenty of information about that. It might not be a city's song, but it might be enough to keep Rodney from losing his mind in the years it takes him to make his way home.

* * *

**6 December, 2006 / 33 Days After The Second Exodus **

The first thing Rodney tries is a frequency generator. Which works - but only if he's within five feet of the thing, and only then if he boosts the signal strength to the point where it starts interfering with the computers, neither of which is actually conducive to making his life 'better' in any way. Though it does help him to manage a couple of hours of sleep when all other options fail him.

He tinkers with the idea of building a portable generator for a while but scraps the idea before he can even get into the prototype phase, largely because anything he might build, however small, would have the same problem, and since he spends half his life writing computer code and a good portion of the rest wrist-deep in someone else's, it's just not feasible. Not unless he wants to go teach and do the whole chalkboard-filled lecture hall thing for the foreseeable future, and Rodney hasn't fallen quite that low yet.

Still, there has to be a solution, even if it doesn't exist on Earth - yet. Both John and Lorne have spent considerable amounts of time away from Atlantis since becoming 'pastores' and neither of them have gone the kind of complete, pill-popping mental Rodney has, so there must be a way.

Then again, both John and Lorne are 'pastores,' which means they have the benefit of thousands of tiny nanoids in their brains, belting out the appropriate frequencies wherever they go, regardless of whether or not there's an AI around to listen. Rodney's only a 'custodia'. All he's got are receiving privileges, and right now there's not a hell of a lot for him to receive on Earth.

Maybe he should just build an AI. That would definitely solve all his problems and, considering all the walls he's running into, probably less difficult as well.

Then again, maybe the problem is that the music is supposed to be 'inside' his head. His frequency generator and ever-expanding iTunes library help somewhat, but they're external, so maybe the only real solution is to find a way to pipe the stuff directly into his head and hope it doesn't liquify his brains - or worse.

The idea of putting something directly into his brain, however, makes Rodney very nervous. If it didn't, he'd have asked to help him become a 'pastor' ages ago. But the thought of millions of nanoids crawling beneath his skin, digging into his brain; altering him on a fundamental, irrevocable level makes him uncomfortable in a way Rodney doesn't have words for. There are no guarantees that putting something into his brain won't change everything. Sure, Lorne's been through the procedure and seems to be the same, but Lorne's not like him. Lorne's, well, pretty smart for a military grunt, but he's not Rodney. For all he knows, sticking something in his brain could take away whatever it is that makes 'him' and not Samantha Carter the smartest person in two galaxies.

But it wouldn't be nanoids. It would be something he built himself, something he can 'take out' if he ever wants (needs) to. Maybe that would be better.

That's what Rodney's hoping, anyway, as he holds at the culmination of all his work over the last three weeks up to eye level: It looks like a flattened pushpin with a very long pin, or maybe a quarter someone's stuck a sewing needle to. At it's most basic level, it's a modified Tok'ra memory recall device. He's stripped out all the memory recall functions and replaced them with a mobile wifi hotspot and a direct link to the most fire-walled, secured computer he could build. All that's left of the original mechanism is its neural interface, which should allow harmless white noise to be piped directly into his brain at the same frequency as an Ancient city's song.

"Well, here goes nothing," he says before pushing the device through the mastoid skin behind his right ear.

He's unconscious before he hits the ground.


	4. Pars Quattuor

Exsul  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Quattuor_

* * *

**8 November, 2006 / 5 Days After The Second Exodus - Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

Iohannes has plans:

He's going to show all of the prissy, pretentious, self-righteous sons of bitches who have the gall themselves 'higher' beings. They think that Ascension is a punishment for him (and, okay, yes, in many ways it is), so he's going to shove it all back down their throats. He'll be a king and a god and stick his hand into every damn cookie jar in existence if that's what it takes. He's going to make those bastards beg for the honour of Descending him. And if he happens to save the galaxy in the process, well, so much the better.

His plans have timelines. Maybe not very firm ones, but timelines nonetheless:

There are fifty-seven planets out there that think him divine and if he can make that two hundred ninety by the end of the Terran year, the entire galaxy should be worshiping him by the end of what would have been the Expedition's eighth year. Iohannes could care less about this except for the fact that where his religion goes, so does his empire, and if he can get the Confederation spread to every inhabited planet in Pegasus, rather than just the seventeen it's on now, then they've got a real chance of taking care of the Wraith once and for all.

Ten years. If things continue at the pace he'd projected before the Terrans discovered 'Tria', Iohannes honestly thinks he can have the Wraith irradiated a decade or less. And that point he'll have done so much interference that the others will have no choice but to Descend him.

And ten years isn't so bad. In ten years, Rodney will only be forty-eight. Not only would that give them another four, five decades together, but the apparent age difference won't be such as to offend his 'amator's' Terran sensibilities.

Danelia is disrupting his plans:

Not actively, (not yet. She doesn't know enough about them to actively interfere), but that day will come, Iohannes is sure of it. Even if everything he is trying to accomplish wasn't anathema to his people, his cousin would seek to dismantle solely because it doesn't end with her in charge.

This is why Iohannes sets up shop in Elizabeta's office. It's got nothing on the one in his suite, but it does have an unobstructed view of the Gate Room, which is all he really needs to make sure she doesn't do anything too destructive.

Okay, realistically, that's not true. Danelia is extremely intelligent, impeccably resourceful, and limited by impressively few morals. Iohannes has often had the impression that she would murder her own wife and eat her still-warm heart if she thought it might end the war with the Wraith, but that's only ever been him. Everyone else has always adored Danelia. He's not naive enough to think that it's because she's 'not' really the vaguely sociopathic, mildly genocidal 'meretrix' he knows her to be; she's just that good of an actress. But he's always been better at letting people see only what they want to see, and can see through Danelia's attempts to do the same easily.

He's doing just that - sitting in Elizabeta's office and actually writing up his refutation of Matiyasevich's Theorum (he's that bored) - when the 'porta' activates for the first time since the Expedition left.

He glances up and looks through the open door at Seleuca Modia Scaevola, who's ostensibly manning the appropriate console in the Control Room but in reality in quiet, intense discussion with Metellus Val, who really has no reason to be there at all, save for the memo he passed along over an hour ago.

Iohannes rolls his eyes before hauling himself out of his chair and exiting his office. "Flirt on your own time," he tells them. "Who's knocking?"

Scaevola turns disinterestedly his way. "We are not expecting visitors today."

Rolling his eyes again, "That's not what I asked. I asked, 'Who's knocking?' which can colloquially be understood as, 'Whose IDC is coming through the open 'pons astria'?' So, again, who's dialling our 'porta'?"

"Helia does not wish to maintain relations with the natives of this galaxy."

"So what? You're just gonna let whoever it is walk straight into the 'cataracta'?" Iohannes asks, stalking around the console and reading the display over her shoulder. "Here. Right there. Look, it's the Genii. I know we've not been best of pals in the past, but they're part of the Confederation now. I think letting more of their people go splat against the 'cataracta' might send them the wrong message."

Blandly, "Perhaps that will discourage these Descendants from attempting to contact us again."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Iohannes groans, reaching over and lowering the 'cataracta' himself. "'Cause, seriously, I woulda thought everything that went on with Tirianus woulda proved to you that our race can't survive in isolation - or maybe not. You guys didn't stick around for the end of the battle, so maybe you missed that part. I'll tell you, though, it was a doozy. The radiation from a hundred ruptured hyperdrives messed with city's sensors for months after. We never did get up all the debris that made it down to the planet."

"The only thing the battle proved was that battle strategy should not be trusted to an Abomination," Scaevola begins-

-but Iohannes is already walking away, heading down the Gate Room steps to meet up with the trio that's come through the 'porta' from Genia (though he does pause long enough to offer her a decidedly Terran gesture and the suggestion, "Go 'crisa' yourself, Scaevola. Trust me, from everything Father said, it's better than letting Metellus do it for you." The first goes right over her head, but the second gets him the irritation he'd been looking for.) "First Minister Radhim," he continues when he reaches the lower level, addressing Ladon and his companions this time. "What brings you to Atlantis today?"

* * *

**20 November, 2006 / 17 Days After The Second Exodus**

"I understand you are building an army."

Iohannes doesn't look up from his equations. "I prefer to think of it as an 'argosy.' Not much use for an land-based force when our enemies attack from space."

"One 'linter' hardly makes a flotilla, Icarus."

"Rodney's working on designs for more," he shrugs, still not looking Danelia's way. He's busy re-deriving basic number theory - in base-10 - in a way that he hopes will make sense to the Descendants of this galaxy. It's not exactly difficult, but it's engrossing and needs to be done if he wants to have a force capable of manning the 'lintres' he plans to build. (Plus, he's really that bored.)

His cousin snorts. "A pointless endeavour at best, seeing as how he is in Avalon, and a fruitless one given what I have already seen of the Terrans' so-called 'lintres'. I would not willingly go into battle aboard one."

"And yet," Iohannes says dryly, glancing up at last, "the hyperdrive aboard 'Daedalus' has never failed after being in a firefight with the Wraith."

Danelia bristles. "Nothing that pitiful excuse for a 'linter' has ever been through could possibly compare to the battles that 'Tria' withstood before we were forced to abandon the flight."

"Maybe. But that still doesn't explain why you tried to flee to Terra, cousin."

"As I have stated several times already, I believed-"

"-that the evacuation signal had been given, that the damages to your hyperdrive could be repaired, that you could somehow make a sixty-seven thousand year journey in even your stasis-extended lifetime. I know. I've heard. But just 'cause you keep repeating it doesn't make it any more believable."

"Perhaps I have simply not repeated it enough. After all, with the way you continue to insist that you are a good man, that you would never fall prey to the 'Haeresis' you have created, it is more than obvious you believe your brazen falsehood to be truths."

"So you admit to lying."

"Do you?"

"It's not a lie."

"Listen to yourself," Danelia says, taking a stiff seat on the edge of one of the armchairs opposite. "Even you do not believe that."

"Dan-"

"Do not be a child," she interrupts, but while her words are harsh, they are not the biting, cutting comments of moments before. No, it's something that might be confused with genuine concern - but only confused with. The Danelia he knew before Tirianus never felt emotion for anyone beyond herself and while it might seem like ten years for him, it's only been three weeks for her. She hasn't changed.

She never changes.

None of them ever do.

Still, Iohannes falls into the trap she lays out. He sees it coming and still walks into it headlong because she almost sounds like she 'cares' and he's become a little too used over the last two-and-a-half years to having people give a damn about him. Sighing, he rubs a hand across his face and asks, "Y'know that argument stopped working long before either of us went into stasis, right?"

"Icarus, I do not believe you are a wicked person at heart, but you are painfully naïve. Do you honestly our ancestors created the precept regarding non-intervention simply because they desired strategic independence from other worlds? No, the doctrine arose because they believed - rightly so - that there exists no person, of any species, anywhere in this universe that could be handed the unbounded and unchallenged power of a god and not fall prey to its abuses, its excesses."

/You won't,/ 'Lantis assures him.

"I won't," he repeats, almost believing it himself. Atlantis says he is a good man. So does everyone else whose ever voiced an opinion about his unintentional godhood. Iohannes has no choice but to believe them.

"False pride will get you nowhere but closer to your inevitable downfall."

"Catchy," he tells her, leaning back in his chair and tucking his hands behind his head. "You should get that put on a pillow or something."

"Your namesake was the best of men by all accounts, utterly without fault. Yet even Icarus Eosphorus' noble attempt to convince his brother to forswear 'Haeresis' and break the 'Schisma' before it truly began ended with him embracing the perversion he sought to destroy and becoming the most terrifying of all 'Haeretici'."

"Good thing I'm a piss-poor excuse for an Alteran then."

"Be that as it may, I know you care for the Descendants of this galaxy. Even you must acknowledge that your 'Haeresis' will ultimately be a disservice to them. They will become little more than thralls to your depravity and, ultimately, die deaths of the most meaningless kind."

"Not going to happen."

"Are you so certain? Your intentions may be noble, but so were the 'Haeretici's' once."

"I'll take my chances," Iohannes says, letting his chair fall back into its normal, upright position. "Though," he adds, deciding to call her bluff before he can trick himself into believing Danelia actually cares about him or the Descendants, "I wouldn't have thought that would matter to you, considering your master plan involved recreating the Assurans and having them destroy ever potential Wraith food source in the galaxy."

All pretence of concern falling away as if shattered by his words, "It was worth the attempt." She sighs, "Since guilt is not proving an adequate motivator for you, I am reduced to saying this in the plainest terms possible, which even you should have no difficultly understanding: disband your army now or face the consequences."

"Figured out a way to kill an Ascended being have you?" he chuckles.

"No, but your 'heres' is flesh and blood."

Iohannes is on his feet before he makes the conscious decision to rise. "You so much as think about threatening him again and I promise you I won't need an army to destroy you."

"Perhaps," Danelia concedes, standing, "but you are just one person. I have one hundred and two Lantean Guardsmen at my command who are utterly loyal to me alone. You will have to kill every single one of them to reach me, by which point your precious Argathelianus will be dead. So if you would like to be the genocide of your own race, please, by all means continue building your argosy. Because even if you manage to kill me, I will ensure you spend the rest of your life regretting you failed to head my warnings first."

"You're welcome to try."

"Oh, cousin," she promises, pausing on her way out the door, "you should know by now that I never do anything by halves."

* * *

**4 December, 2006 / 31 Days After The Second Exodus**

There's a force of nature beneath his skin, a destructive force of which most men have never seen the like. No storm could ever match him, no weapon created could even come close. His power is boundless and absolute, fettered only by his own forbearance, as tenuous as that is.

Most the time this scares the hell out of him, because if he ever 'were' to give into his own 'Haeresis', there would be no power in the universe that could stop him. But this is not one of those times.

* * *

He doesn't tell them what he's planning.

He just walks out of the hangar, making his way to the Central Spire by foot. And when he sees the first pair of Guardsmen jogging his way, weapons drawn, he pulls out his own and shoots them both neatly in the head before they can even let a round off.


	5. Pars Quinque

Exsul  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Quinque_

* * *

**9 December, 2006 / 36 Days After The Second Exodus - Area 51, Terra, Avalon**

"Rory wishes you wouldn't wear that thing."

/Is she still calling me her evil stepfather?/

"Well, yes," the Major admits reluctantly over the comm, "but-"

Rodney snorts, /Ah, then no,/ his fingers rising to rub against the device sill in place behind his right ear. It had taken some fine tuning, but he's got it doing what it's supposed to - even if it is a bit of a moot point now that Lorne's arrived with both 'Aurora' and 'Tria', months or even years ahead of schedule. /Besides, it's letting us talk on a channel so secure the SGC will never even notice it exists, let alone that we're carrying out treason right under their noses./

"I'm fairly certain it's not treason if we've already defected."

/Fine. Espionage then, if we insist on labelling things,/ he huffs, yanking the adapter out of the next-to-last slot on the memory core Lorne's brought him from the 'Tria'. /They'll never notice the 'espionage' we're carrying out right under their noses 'cause of this nifty little device I created so I wouldn't 'lose my mind' while I waited for you guys to show up. I know the little wife of yours might not like me very much, but even she has to see that having me here, on Earth, alive and in full control of my mental faculties does her 'Pater's' plans a lot more good than having me here, on Earth, locked away in some sort of psychiatric facility because I went crazy from no longer being able to hear her or her 'Mater's' songs./

There's hardly a pause before Lorne says, "She likes you just fine."

Another snort. /And you don't have to humour me either, Major. John's the one that adopted you, not me, and if you so much as start calling me 'your' evil stepfather, I will destroy you in ways that you, frankly, just don't have the imagination to understand./

Lorne continues as if he's not spoken - a clear sign that he's been spending entirely too much time with John if there ever was one. He tries not to be jealous of that fact. "She's just worried about you."

/There's nothing to worry about. I fixed the whole sensory overload problem. I was desperate, not stupid. Plus, how was I to know you guys would be showing up eighteen hours later, making the whole problem moot? Thanks for that, by the way. Remind me to have a nice, long talk with your father when we get back to Atlantis about his being an overprotective son of a bitch. Again. We would never have had this problem in the first place if he'd just let me 'stay on Atlantis'./

"Yeah, not stepping into the middle of that one."

/Coward./

"And proud of it," the Major says in a tone that suggests he just might actually be. Bastard. Trust John to adopt someone almost as contrary as himself. "Find anything yet?"

He slides the adapter into the last data port. /Nothing useful. Unless you count five hundred odd years of fight plans and.../ Rodney's voice trails off as he sinks deeper into the data, the device he's not yet named providing a direct neural uplink between his laptop and, by extension, the Ancient memory core it's plugged into.

It's not quite like the neural network that they'd found 'Aurora's' original crew hooked up too - there's (IF i = NULL THEN SELECT 'default') no virtual reality for him to inhabit, no real interface (ELSEIF NOT (i = NULL) THEN SELECT 'audio/visual') at all. It's the same kind of connection, the same sort of idea, but the output is lines and lines of 01110000011101010111001001100101 01100011011011110110010001100101 dumping itself into Rodney's mind, without any attempt to make itself better understood. It has all the user-friendliness of an Apple Genius Bar, but luckily he's not the average user.

/Jackpot,/ he says an indeterminable time later, eyes as heavy as if he'd been staring at an actual computer screen for the last however many hours.

"You found something?"

/Was there ever any doubt? I mean, seriously, I built ATLAS out of three equations scribbled in an Ancient schoolchild's notebook - one of which was barely useful at all - and ten-thousand-year-old waterlogged scraps. Finding files in Helia's own ship's databanks that implicate her in galactic genocide was only ever a matter of time./

The sound of eyes rolling is audible over the comm line. "What'd you find?"

/What part of 'galactic genocide' is unclear? No, wait,/ Rodney says quickly, /I don't want to know. I really, really don't. I've spent the last month surrounded by idiots who couldn't tell the difference between hydrogen hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide./ He changes direction when it sounds like Lorne's going to ask him what, exactly, the difference is over the comm.. /You know what? That doesn't doesn't matter. You're a humanities major. You'd be even more useless than they manage to be - which is an accomplishment in and of itself; you should be proud of yourself, Major. Not many people could manage that. But for the sake of my sanity and yours, pretend for five minutes that you've got more than two braincells to rub together and act like you understand the perfectly sensible words coming out of my mouth./

Lorne laughs at him, the bastard. "How about I just beam down there and let you show me what you're talking about?"

/Or you could do that,/ he concedes, irritatedat the delay. /Will Rory and 'Tria' be okay without you?/

"Yeah. Rory's still trying to get 'Tria' to talk to her. That should occupy her for another three or four days, until it sinks in that 'Tria' doesn't have the capacity to talk back. Then the shit's going to hit the fan. But we're good until then."

It's a testament to how odd Rodney's life has become that he no longer thinks such things 'are' odd anymore. /Come on down then. Give me fine minutes to put up a sign on the door saying I'm taking an idiot-free day so we won't be interrupted and then the coast should be clear./

* * *

**9 December, 2006 / 36 Days After The Second Exodus - Stargate Command, Terra, Avalon**

"There it is again."

"There 'what' is again?" Daniel yawns. He's made his way up to her lab so she can crunch some numbers for him regarding possible locations of the Sangraal he's gotten from his latest reading of the book Merlin left for them beneath Glastonbury Tor. Something to do with chronodisticha in the text that she would, frankly, find a lot more interesting if she'd managed to get more sleep last night. It's her own fault, but there it is.

"The sensor ghost. I wouldn't worry so much about it - Oracle still needs a lot of work - except for the fact that it appears in the exact same spot every time."

"What spot?"

"In the shadow of the moon. At the L2 Lagrange point, to be exact."

"Huh. That's..."

"Just where you would put something if you were trying to hide it from someone on Earth?" Sam finishes for him. Then, with a sigh, she rubs a hand across her face. As much as she hates to admit it, she must. "I'm going to need to bring McKay in on this."

Daniel breathes in sharply. "Are you sure that's really such a good idea?"

"He knows Oracle better than anyone. If we're ever going to figure out what's up there short of poking it with a stick, we're going to need his help."

"Your funeral."

"Care to tag along?"

"Sure. Someone's going to have to keep an eye on Vala while you and Rodney are doing science."

* * *

**9 December, 2006 / 36 Days After The Second Exodus - Area 51, Terra, Avalon**

"You look like shit, Sir."

"Excuse me?" McKay asks archly, bloodshot eyes barely glancing up from the laptop he's half hunched, half collapsed over.

"You look like shit, Pops?"

"You're a troll, aren't you?" he continues, sounding more tired than he did over the comm and rather more out of it. It's kind of disconcerting actually. Evan's seen the doctor tired, exhausted to the point of collapse even, but shadows that deep bode only ill, especially beneath someone's eyes. "Underneath your all-American, corn-fed, do-gooder candy coating, you're really nothing more than an troll looking for a keyboard and an innocent and unsuspecting online forum to molest."

"Uh-huh," Evan says, undeterred by the sleep-deprived rambling. "When was the last time you slept, Doc?"

McKay, of course, waves the question off. "Irrelevant. What 'is' relevant is the galactic genocide, which is what Helia's apparently been planning this from the get go. And since none of those words appear small enough for you, let me rephrase by saying: I've found a recording of Helia basically admitting she was going to try to reactivate the Replicators and get them to kill all the non-Ancients in Pegasus, hoping to starvation would kill the Wraith."

The Colonel had said his cousin was sociopathic, but he'd just sort of thought that was exaggeration. After all, Sheppard didn't seem to like 'any' member of his own race and even the Ancients wouldn't give a madwoman command of a spaceship. "Are you sure?"

"No, I'm just making things up to get us back to Atlantis faster," he huffs. "Yes, I'm sure. And in case 'you' are going to start voicing objections to this thing too," he gestures at his right ear and the small device behind it that Lorne can barely make out, "I've found several recordings of her saying something along those lines, so it's not all in my head.

"The one I'm specifically talking about was a personal log disguised as a requisitions order. The take-away message from her 'Star Trek'-style monologuing?" he continues, gesturing to his laptop, where the log is preloaded, waiting for Evan to view. "Her plan from the beginning was to wait for the Ancients on Atlantis and Tirianus to die out - something she felt inevitable because of the course the war was taking, - until her crew would be the only ones left because of relativity and stasis and all that. As it is, her crew only aged two years and change. Anyway, at some point she'd return to Atlantis, build some Replicators, and get them to kill all the humans in Pegasus. The Ancient civilisation would be repopulated by her crew and she'd be the queen bee in their merry new empire. Cue maniacal laugher."

"That's..."

"Crazy? Yeah, but it could work. Siege warfare in reverse, or something. Atlantis has enough greenhouses to feed a few thousand people comfortably, but you take away the Wraiths' food supply and you've killed them without having to fire a single shot."

"I thought Helia was a pilot, not an scientist."

"Unless you know something about her that I don't, she's not."

Evan considers this. He's learned a lot about the Ancients that now inhabit Atlantis, but hardly any of it is actually useful. It's a lot to do with how they're all related (which is to say, intimately, and in ways that probably would have driven them extinct even without the Wraith's help) and how to actually wear their insane uniform (which involves rather more layers and laces than he's seen outside a period drama), and very little to do with anything related to the first Wraith War. "Then," he asks, "how'd she plan to build the Replicators?"

"It was less of a twelve-point plan and more of a general mission statement. I mean, her dad's the one that invented them. Well, her dad and John's granddad. Maybe she had copies of the blueprints that the others thought they'd gotten rid of. Or maybe she thought the plans might be in Janus' notes and that she'd be able to get at them that way." He punctuates this statement liberally with more yawns.

"So could she actually do it?"

McKay appears to consider this. "No. I mean, okay, maybe if she has a couple of decent engineers and her dad's notes to work with, but I'm betting she doesn't have either, or else she'd have tried this earlier. But, she doesn't need them now, 'cause the Ancients 'didn't' destroy all the original Replicators. Once she knows that, all she's got to do is reprogram them, and doing that, while still insanely difficult, is child's play compared to building them."

"We've got to tell the Colonel."

"Of course we've got to tell John. Idiot. That's what I wanted to do in the first place, but then you somehow managed to confuse 'galactic genocide' with-" His pique is interrupted by a yawn so wide that Evan's own jaw aches in sympathy.

Quickly, "You're right," Evan says to forestall anymore argument. "I'm an idiot. What do you need to grab so we can get out of here?"

"Oh thank God," he breathes, and starts directing Evan towards everything that needs to be packed up for the journey back to Atlantis.

* * *

**10 December, 2006 / 37 Days After The Second Exodus - Stargate Command, Terra, Avalon**

Sam doesn't think anything of it at first. So what if Doctor McKay hadn't been in his lab when she'd beamed over to Area 51 for the second time in as many days? She'd told him less than twenty-four hours before that he needs a life outside of his lab, so Sam shouldn't really be surprised that he's taken her advice. (Okay, maybe she should be, but he apparently had, so she wasn't questioning it.) The man had looked like death warmed over, refrozen, then left to thaw on the counter for a couple days before finally being thrown away. And that was a kind assessment. (Being unkind would have involved zombie references and, really, no one deserved zombies. No one.)

So, no, Sam's not surprised, and goes back to trying to figure out what's wrong with Oracle by herself. Only the sensor ghost seems to have disappeared just as quickly as it appeared, which is disconcerting in a way she'd long since learned to trust her guts about, so she calls the gatehouse at Area 51 and asks if Doctor McKay has checked back in yet.

Sam's mildly disconcerted to learn that Rodney never checked 'out', but figures he must have been availing himself of his quarters in the Civilian's Barracks for once.

It's only when Doctor Lam tracks her down in the commissary at lunch the next day to tell her that neither Doctor Beckett or Doctor Cole have shown up for their shifts in the infirmary that day that Sam begins to have suspicions. Suspicions that are immediately deepened when Carolyn goes on to tell her that not only are the two doctors missing, but every vial of the Ancient Gene Activation vaccine is missing from her storerooms, along with several ampules of other more common, less classified medicines.

The mountain goes on immediate lockdown. Further investigation discovers it's not just the SGC's stores of the ATA vaccine that are missing; so are Area 51's, along with Doctors Biro and Parrish. A few vials are still safe in the vaults at Homeworld Security, but it's not much and not enough to risk trying to synthesising more from. Earth has precious few natural gene users as it is and very, very few of them have the skills or training necessary to operate the Antarctic weapons platform. They need every ounce of what they have to try to activate the gene in non-users with the skills, should Jack not be able to reach McMurdo in the event of an Ori attack.

(It's not going well. It only takes in one out of every four people, even screening for the Gaelic background it seems to favour. They need those vaccines, if only to up the chances that someone who 'could' use the Chair actually 'can'.)

She calls Masaryk University and wakes up three different grad students on a hunch before discovering that, no, no one's seen or heard from Doctor Zelenka since Friday afternoon. All his personal belongings are missing from his office too, just like with all the others. A call to Cambridge garners much the same about Doctor Heightmeyer and before the afternoon's over Sam has a list in front of her of twenty-three different members of the former Atlantis Expedition who've mysteriously disappeared from the face of the planet in the last twenty-four hours.

They're all civilians. Only eight are actually United States citizens, but those that aren't missing from the leading universities in their respective fields are missing from the most highly guarded, secretive military bases on the planet. And there's only one force in the universe that could have gotten them out from so many different noses without detection.

Which is how she finds herself in Stargate Operations with Cam, Daniel, and General Landry as they dial Atlantis for the first time in almost six weeks.

"I'm not sure what we're aiming for here," Daniel admits as Walter announces the third chevron has encoded.

"We're trying to get our people back," Cam answers quickly.

"It doesn't look like they were taken against their will. In fact, the folks that are missing are the ones that took special exception to the IOA's decision to recall the Expedition."

"Special exception or not," Landry says, "they're still citizens of Earth - and valuable assets. Their disappearances are a matter of planetary security."

Daniel crosses his arms and redoubles his stares at the monitors overhead. "I don't know if they'd agree with you, General. I've read the reports: most of them have been with the Expedition from the beginning, all of them consider Atlantis home, and none of them have been adjusting very well to being back on Earth."

"They're still our people."

"I'm sure Colonel Sheppard feels the same way."

Walter, luckily, choses to interrupt, telling them that the wormhole's established and that their IDC has been transmitted.

There's a long pause before they get a response - mainly that of a shaggy-haired teenager wearing a monoaural headset and a ridiculously wide smile. "Hello. I'm Jinto."

Daniel, always one for introductions, speaks up for them. "Hi, Jinto. My name's Daniel Jackson, and this is Colonel Carter, Colonel Mitchell, and General Landry. We're friends of his from Earth and we're trying to get in touch with Colonel Sheppard. Can you get him for us?"

Jinto smiles - if possible - even wider. "You are the Earth-folk? Lord Iohannes will be very pleased to hear from you, but," his smile wavers just a little bit, "he is very busy right now. There is much work that must be done to repair the damage the False Gods did to the City of the Ancestors and the Lord is overseeing most of it himself."

"False Gods?" Cam asks, somewhat startled. "You mean the Ori?"

"I do not know of any peoples who call themselves 'Ori' and I know very many of the worlds in Pegasus - even more than Lady Teyla, which is why Lord Iohannes has let me apprentice for the high position of 'Gate Tech'. Father says it is a great honour and Lady Teyla says I am doing very well, though it is only my third day."

"A very good job," Daniel agrees. "Can you tell us more about these 'False Gods'?"

"They were Ancestors who left on a great ship long ago, looking for a planet free from the Wraith. When they couldn't find one, they came back to Atlantis. Lord Iohannes let them stay at first, but then they tried to kill his son and steal the city. So the Lord killed all the False Gods - well, all of them but their Witch Queen. The Lord captured her and is with her now in the cells below the city, which is why he cannot speak with you now: he is trying to learn why she plotted against the Confederation and tried to bring about The End Times.

"But I can take a message if you'd like. I'm sure Lord Iohannes will want to speak with you as soon as he's free."

* * *

**a/n: **The first part of this FLOWED in a way that is hard to describe. The middle parts were HELL. The last part, when I finally settled on a POV, happened in like 3 hours today.  
1) This takes place AFTER parts 1-4 (some more directly than others). 2) Forgive my SQL, it's been a while. 3) All the 0's and 1's are ASCII for "pure code". 4) Chronodisticha are chronograms in couplet form. 5) I probably should put something here, but... IDK what. Feel free to ask me questions if any of this seems funky.


	6. Pars Sex

Exsul  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Sex_

* * *

**5 December, 2006 / 32 Days After The Second Exodus - Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

It's so easy it hurts, far more than the actual act does:

Thalia Nicon Legata is Iohannes' second cousin once removed and Danelia's Head of Security to boot, but she goes down easily with two shots to the head and a third to the heart, just to be sure she's not going to shoot him in the back when he thinks her down. The most danger she ever poses to him is as a corpse, when he almost trips over her dead body as he puts a pair of bullets into Nicolaa's uncle, Celsus Cado.

He kills Domitian with similar ease, though he's waist deep in the city's water filtration system and never sees him coming. Hercilia is falling out of bed when he finds her, pale blue sheet slipping down her hips and tangling around her legs as she scrabbles for something she never finds in the drawer of her nightstand. Sunniva never wakes up at all.

Danelia is the only one who comes close to being a challenge, managing to catch him in the shoulder with her 'manuballista'. He repays the debt in kind before placing a bullet through both of her kneecaps as well (he may be Ascended, but he's not above being petty).

When she's well and truly unconscious from shock, pain, and blood loss, he carries her down the the brig. Iohannes even heals her injuries enough so that she won't die before he allows it before going back up to the Gate Room with the intention of dialing Terra.

He gets as far as the third chevron before the reality of what he's just done sinks in.

He sits there until the 'porta' times out and for a long time after, until day fades to night turns to day again, and wonders if this is what the others meant all those times they called him an Abomination.

* * *

**6 December, 2006 / 33 Days After The Second Exodus**

/You are not an Abomination,/ 'Lantis tells him.

Iohannes' sitting in one of the Conference Room chairs, the seat tipped back so far as to be almost at a perfect forty-five degree angle. His face is pointing towards the ceiling and his boots (still caked with dried blood, not that he's letting himself notice that, just like he's not thinking about the three dead bodies in the Control Room alone, or the ninety-eight others still scattered throughout the city) are propped up on the table. "That's not what the dictionary would say."

/It's what anyone in their right minds would say. The hardest thing in life-/

"-is doing what 'is' right rather than what you 'wish' to be right. I know, 'carissima'. I know. But I didn't want to kill them."

/Yes, you did. You always have, 'Pastor', and rightly so./

"Well, I didn't 'want' to want to kill them."

Atlantis seems to consider this. /You have chosen a difficult path, 'Pastor',/ she begins delicately before hastening to add, /and we will follow you down it, to whatever end, but.../

"You really shouldn't," he mumbles. His words echo in the silence, which makes even the whisper of his 'pluviale' where it brushes against the floor when he walks into a magnificent roar. "We've had this conversation: I destroy everything I touch. It's what I am. It's what I do. I've destroyed my own people. I'm bound to destroy you too."

/Do not say such things!/ the city reproves, the lights brightening perceptively overhead as the doors spin once violently around their hinges before slamming shut again. /You have saved us! Time and again, when all has seemed lost, you have saved us. The only reason we still stand is because of you; the only reason there's life still in this galaxy is because of of you./

"I'd let them all die to save you," he says more softly still.

/No, you wouldn't./

"Would." It's true too. He'd do anything to save Atlantis, anything at all. Isn't committing genocide on the last of his race to protect her proof enough of that?

/No, you wouldn't,/ she repeats with such solemn earnestness it almost hurts to hear, especially considering it's a patent lie. /You are valiant and selfless and righteous and kind. You are merciful when you can afford to be and, often, when you cannot. You may not be a god, but you are the closest thing to it this galaxy has ever seen-/

"'Lantis-"

/-and they are right to worship you!/

"'Carissima'!"

/We do not care if it is 'Haeresis'. We have seen everything you have done for the Descendants; your actions have not been driven by some sort of puffed-up pride or misplaced vanity, but by a genuine desire to help those you can, where you can, how you can. That is the farthest thing from 'Haeresis' there is.

/You are The Star That Fell From Heaven, The Lord of the Land Beyond Death, The Father of All Men and Maker of All Worlds. You are Iohannes Ianideus Icarus Imperator, guardian of this galaxy and lord of this universe. Just by being who you are, you give your people something great they can strive for. With your help, they will create a better universe than the Alterans ever managed to. It may never be a utopia, but it will at least be free from the Wraith, and that is more than any of the others ever accomplished.

/And, more than that,/ 'Lantis says somewhat more softly, the fierce assurance in her tone giving way to something that could almost be called embarrassed, /you are our 'Pastor'. Our most beloved 'Pastor'. We have known so many, but we have loved none as we love you. You have done so much for us and we've done so little for you-/

"You've done everything for me, 'carissima'," Iohannes insists, not needing to voice the truth they both know: she's the only one that had ever done anything for him until the Expedition arrived, which somehow makes all those terrible years that came Before that much more awful to contemplate and his recent killing of so many of those selfsame perpetrators of so many childhood indignities less like proactive defense and more like revenge.

Continuing as if he'd not spoken, /-the least we can do is this./

"I wish you wouldn't."

/We wish you'd dial Terra, but neither of us would know what to do if the universe ever gave us what we wanted/

* * *

He tries dialing Terra, for her, but gets as far as fifth glyph before he stops. He spends the next hour trying to figure out why his hand, which had been so steady putting headshots into all that remained of his kin, shook as he'd tried to dial the 'porta' and continues to tremble at the thought of it.

He dials New Athos instead. For some reason, it's easier.

* * *

**7 December, 2006 / 34 Days After The Second Exodus**

"You are an Abomination," Danelia tells him.

"There's some disagreement on that point," Iohannes allows. He's dragged one of the comfier armchairs onto the prison level and placed it in the centre of the room with its high back to the door and about ten feet between it and the cell bars. There's no psychological benefit to making his cousin think he's not invested in this - she knows he's invested; he's killed one hundred one people to bring them both to this place, - but he figures he might as well be comfortable as they have their silent little pissing match.

These four words are the first she's said to him since waking to find herself imprisoned two days earlier.

"I would imagine. I cannot think of many religions which would countenance their 'God Most High' to be known additionally as the abhorrence he rightfully is."

"They tend to stick to 'Lord', actually. Or 'Apostolic Majesty', if they're feeling particularly flowery. There's not exactly a right ancient tradition of kings and empires in Pegasus to draw from."

"How unfortunate for them you chose to change that."

"They did the choosing."

"Perhaps, but you did not refuse, Icarus."

"Someone had to do something," he shrugs, untucking his legs from where they've been folded up beneath him for the last several hours, before leaning back in the chair.

"No one had to do anything, least of all you."

"Is this where you lecture me about the slippery slope from well-meaning intervention to 'Haeresis'? 'Cause I gotta tell you, Danelia, I'm just not feeling it today."

Danelia is standing tall and straight-backed in the cell. If her formerly-shattered kneecaps are giving her any pain at all, she's not showing it. Her Guardsman's uniform is streaked with blood and her hair is frizzier than usual, but regardless she still has that same, understated elegance that all the Alteran women he's ever known have. Incarceration doesn't seem to have effected her at all, nor has the knowledge that all of her crew - the last of their species, to include her wife - are now dead and burning merrily in the retorts scattered throughout the city. "No," she informs him without any great inflection. "It is the very definition of madness to reattempt a fruitless enterprise already knowing the result."

"Y'know," Iohannes says, unable and unwilling to temper the wideness of his smile, "a Terran physicist once said something along those lines - the guy who figured out relativity for them, actually."

His cousin makes a noise like a wet cat. It's far more satisfying than murdering her entire crew managed to be.

"If you're not going to lecture me, I dunno how we're going to spend the rest of the evening."

"You could always shoot me again."

"I could," he grants her. "Or we could reminisce about the 'good old days'."

"Do you 'want' to reminisce?"

"Not particularly." All the Terran cop procedurals seem to suggest it's the thing to do, though. It seems a constant that, on each, the detectives should have an improbable number of criminal family members stroke ex-best friends that they must try to redeem. Reminiscing always seems to be the way they go about it - but Iohannes doesn't want Danelia to be redeemed. He doesn't want her humanized. He wants her to show incontrovertibly just how much of a monster she really is before he puts an end to the Alteran species by putting an entire magazine's worth of bullets into her skull.

Which is, of course why Danelia seizes upon it as the topic of discussion. "You were a wretched child, always sneaking off to parts unknown and getting in the worst sort of trouble."

"I didn't realize anyone paid attention to what kind of trouble I got into."

"It has always been hard to miss. Do you recall the incident with the 'autobirota'?"

"Of course." He'd broken half the bones on his right side when he'd crashed and cracked three ribs trying to get out from under the smoldering tangle of metal and 'cervida' before help arrived.

This earns him a smile, the kind that looks so honestly fond that he has trouble determining if it 'is' honest or just another piece in whatever game Danelia is playing this time. "It was a beautiful machine before it was destroyed. Did you build it yourself? I do not believe I ever asked."

"Found it in an old armory. Fixed it up a little, though."

"And then chose to drive it down Atlantis' empty corridors."

Shrugging, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Yes," she says with such uninvested casualness that it can only be a dig at him, "I imagine that is true of most of your plans, Icarus. Such as this one. Tell me, what could possibly be your endgame here? You've sent your son off to parts unknown, murdered my crew, and secured for your children and grandchildren the position of God-Emperor of Pegasus - and yet here I am. What purpose does it serve your great scheme for galactic domination?"

"It's not galactic domination," Iohannes reminds her.

"That, as well, is a matter for some debate."

Iohannes knows he should ask her what she thinks his purpose for keeping her alive is, or why she thinks he's an Abomination today, or maybe he should just start firing bullets into her until she's a mutilated mess of flesh and bone and blood on the cell floor, but he doesn't. He can't, in the same way he still can't bring himself to dial Terra.

He leaves the room instead to go stare at bloodstains on the walls two-and-a-half piers away.

* * *

**10 December, 2006 / 37 Days After The Second Exodus **

In the end, it's his own carelessness that kills Danelia. He is Ascended and, as such, doesn't need to eat - unlike his cousin, who is very much mortal and too prideful to admit he's forgotten to feed her for pretty much the entire time she's been locked up.

It's probably for the best. He's attached too much meaning in his head, he thinks, to the act of killing her. He'd wanted it to have some sort of meaning, some sort of purpose beyond the tying up of loose ends that it's probably best that the only one it'll ever have is that Iohannes is a disgraceful excuse for a sentient being.

* * *

The only reason he notices when she dies at all is because she is, to the bitter end, her father's daughter, and melodrama is much a family trait as tourmaline eyes. Because there turns out to be a dead-man's program written on an off-network computer hidden amongst Danelia's belongings that is set to transmit the moment her biosigns disappear from the city's sensors. At least one iteration of the message is able to get off before Atlantis is able to block it, and while neither of them are quite sure 'what' it is, they both know two things:

One, that the transmission is some sort of computer program. And, two, that its intended destination is the planet Assuras.

In a way, Iohannes is almost glad for it. It allows him to hate his late, unlamented cousin properly instead of fixate on all the ways she was probably right.


	7. Pars Septem

Exsul  
An Ancient!John Story

* * *

_Pars Septem_

* * *

**10 December, 2006 / 37 Days After The Second Exodus - Stargate Command, Terra, Avalon**

It takes eighty-three minutes for Atlantis to dial back, during which time the situation at the SGC spirals into madness, starting with General Landry herding the three of them them into the Briefing Room, handing Sam a schematic of the Lost City, and asking what the best way is to get a nuke past its shields.

Daniel blinks loudly and with extreme prejudice in the silence that follows the pronouncement. "You're going to use nuclear weapons on Atlantis?"

"It's the gateway to Earth," Landry reminds them unnecessarily.

"And we have an iris! You can't just 'nuke' sixty-five million years of history because Colonel Sheppard stole your toys."

"Yes, we do, but thanks to Colonel Carter's Intergalactic Gate Bridge, all they have to do is rewrite the macros and they can come out anywhere in the Milky Way - especially how that they have the man who wrote the God damn things."

"I think," Daniel continues polemically, "you're underestimating the sheer, overwhelming 'apathy' Sheppard has for this galaxy."

Cam snorts. "He cared about it enough to kidnap twenty-three of our guys from out under our noses."

"I don't think that was about Earth. I think it was about Sheppard getting back the people he considers his."

"They aren't his."

"They are to him."

"That doesn't make what he did 'right'."

"You would've done the same thing if it'd been me or Sam."

Scoffing now, "That's different," Cam insists.

"How?" Daniel presses. "How exactly is it different? We're talking about a guy who considers the 'entire population of Earth' to be family. He's the last member of the race that built the Stargates, remember? They do everything big - including, it would seem, defining things. He calls Jack his 'nephew', for goodness sake."

"Are we going to talk about that?" Sam interrupts, because if she knows the men in her life - which, (she sometimes feels) unfortunately, she does, - they'll argue this one point for hours and never actually bring up the most important part of everything the boy, Jinto, had said.

"We 'are' talking about it."

"No," she says patiently. "He said that 'the Lord killed all the False Gods'." Sam doesn't know what part of that sentence is more troubling, but she does know that, "If John was willing to commit genocide on his own race, what do you think will happen if we try to attack Atlantis and fail?"

Cam, with all the puffed up pride of a man trying to make people forget he hadn't been involved, says, "We've gone up against aliens claiming to be gods before."

"But he knows he's not a god. In his mind, he's just a simple solider," Daniel points out. If anyone would know, it's Daniel, because, in his attempts to divine the history and the culture of the Ancients, he's been inadvertently privy to more pieces of John's life than anyone now alive - save for Rodney, who is silent about the matter in a way that only betrays how much their relationship actually matters to him. "But that's not true - the simple part at least. He was in charge of Atlantis' defences for years and planned the Battle of Tirianus almost single-handedly.

"Didn't the Ancients 'lose' that battle?"

"That's not the point. The point is that he's managed to unite an entire galaxy under his banner in very short order. That speaks of both astonishing political ability and extraordinary military skill. Both of which he's willing to use, if Jinto's report of the Massacre of the Ancients is correct, but neither of which has been turned on us - so far."

"So, what? You're not seriously suggesting that we let him get away with it, are you?"

"No, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I 'am' saying is that it is a potentially bad idea to start a war we have no guarantee of winning with the guy who is the most powerful being - temporally, spiritually, and practically - in the universe when we don't have to."

"Believe me, Doctor," Landry says, "I want peace as much as you do. But tell me, Doctor Jackson, what defence do we have against a force that can sneak past all our defences undetected, armed with weapons the likes of which we've only dared to dream of - and headed by a man who is, for all practical purposes, a god? A preemptive first-strike is our 'only' chance of success against those odds."

"That's just it! General, he 'could' have attacked us already. He 'could' have launched a hundred thousand drones and taken out every significant military asset we have, decapitated the world's governments, 'and' destroyed the planet's infrastructure before we could even get anybody into the Control Chair down in Antarctica. 'If' he wanted to. But he didn't. He obviously wants peace just as much as we do."

"Guys who want peace don't go around slaughtering their own people," Cam points out.

"But we don't know the full story there."

"We know enough to know that he apparently killed over a hundred people without batting so much as an eye, and that he's at least partially repopulated the city with a force that is utterly loyal to him."

"I'd hardly call a single teenage boy a force."

"Where there's one..."

"Well," Sam interrupts again, beginning to feel incidental to the conversation, "it's a pointless argument anyway. There's no way to get a nuke past their shields."

"Come on, Sam. It can't be any harder than blowing up a sun."

"Let me rephrase: there's no way 'we' can get a nuke past their shields. They've got an iris made up of pure energy and shield powered by two ZPMs. The Wraith couldn't get past either in a hundred years of war. There's nothing that we've got that makes me think we do any better."

"That's not the sort of thing a commander likes to hear, Colonel."

"It's the truth, Sir. Though..."

"You think of something, Sam?"

"No. It's just... Colonel Sheppard is an Ascended being, which makes him pure energy already - a sentient nuclear bomb. Even if we somehow managed to drop a bomb on him, what guarantee do we have that it would actually kill him? How can we be sure we wouldn't just be making him stronger?"

* * *

**10 December, 2006 / 37 Days After The Second Exodus - Battleship 'Aurora', On Approach To Lantea, Pegasus**

"It is elegant device," Radek says, examining the modified goa'uld memory recall device in his hands. "I cannot believe you put this into your brain."

"Not you too. I've got enough of how it was 'reckless' and 'irresponsible' and 'criminally stupid' from your better half - and second-hand from 'his' better half. It is your job as a scientist to ooh and awe this new technology and not consider the practical consequences."

"Is it? I must have missed that memo."

"Shut up. You know you missed me," Rodney reminds him, moving to snatch the device back but not getting far because of the hand on his shoulder.

"'Ano' - although I do not remember why now."

Rodney tries to snatch back the device again.

Carson's hand tightens around his shoulder - also again. "Rodney!" he complains. "Hold still. I am trying to insert a shunt-"

"Docking port," Rodney corrects. He'd decided the first time he removed the device that the whole affair would be a lot less messy if there were a port he could put the device into rather than an half-healed flesh wound. There'd been steeping last time and though he'd not been sure, the unpleasant thought that it might be spinal fluid was enough for him to search for a better alternative than simply pushing the pin through the mastoid skin behind his ear each time. A couple hours' tooling in 'Aurora's' machine shop following what Rory is, apparently, fancifully calling 'The Hegira' had given him the solution: a docking port inserted behind his right ear into which the device could be inserted, but which would remain in place to prevent his brains from leaking through.

Naturally, it had taken four times as long to convince Carson to actually implant it, nevermind the surgery was outpatient at best.

"-delicate contraption into your brain. It is, quite literally, 'brain surgery' and I cannae do it properly if you donae hold still."

"Please, you've been finished for a good half hour. Now you're just being a Nervous Nellie."

"Whereas you're normally a regular Pollyanna with your health," Carson snorts. "Did you eat anything other than coffee at all these last six weeks?"

"Yes, because constant 'brain-splitting headaches' give you such an appetite. I honestly don't know how I'm going to fit into my prom dress anymore." Rodney rolls his eyes violently - and finds himself actually glad for Carson's hand on his shoulder, as it keeps the world from spinning too badly; maybe everybody really does have a point about DIY brain surgery. "No, of course not. What kind of stupid question is that?"

Carson tisks.

Which, naturally, causes Zelenka to offer, "Evan said he was unconscious when he found him," because the man is a troll. An unabashed troll. Because God forbid he be surrounded by actual, competent colleagues instead of the B-rate comedy club he's got.

"Rodney!"

"What? I had that thing," he points furiously in the direction of the device Radek has by this point placed in a bowl of antiseptic, "dialed up too high. It was a trial run. I didn't know any better. I do now. Problem solved. Stop fretting over me and let me go do something 'useful', like make sure Rory's engines aren't about to explode after going over six million lightyears in six days." It's a justifiable worry too. He sincerely doubts she ever clocked half that many miles in her entire life previous and knows with absolute certainty that no one's done proper maintenance on her since the event Lorne's calling The Second Exodus.

He's fairly certain that's not going to bode well for the IOA. Or the SGC.

"He also said," Radek continues traitorously, "that he had a small pharmacy in his office."

"Seriously? Lorne's been plugged into Rory's navigation system for like all but fifteen minutes for while you've been here and you used that time to gossip about 'me'? Your priories, Radek, are seriously screwed."

"Alas, yes," he sighs. "But someone must be responsible for The Care and Keeping of Rodney McKay while you and the Colonel are apart and, unfortunately, that task falls to me."

Rodney has a distinctly unpleasant sense of where this is going. "If you so much as 'think' an in-law joke, I will put you on water treatment repair for the rest of eternity."

"But Rodney," he says innocently, "is not joke if you 'are'-"

Rodney pulls out of Carson's hold and lets himself fall back against his biobed. "I hate you. I hate you all."

"Now Rodney," Carson says placatingly, patting him on the shoulder, "that's not true."

"Ignore him. We do not need his head swelling any larger, or else you will have to install a shunt in his brain for real."

"That's it: your name, top of the water treatment on-call list, forever."

"What's next? You will send me to my room without dinner?"

"I hate all of you," Rodney repeats, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just give me my device back so I can make sure we won't die a fiery death before we get to Atlantis." Or die in flames once they get there, if Lorne's assessment of the situation when he left is at all accurate.

"What are you going to do? Call it 'the device' for rest of your life?"

No. Because he plans on letting John name it, because John takes ridiculous amounts of pleasure in naming things. He's not going to subject himself to the pout and inevitable renaming if he doesn't have to, so he'll just let John do it in the first place - though they'll still end up arguing about his choice. Rodney thinks it'll probably take them 'months' to name the child if he and John ever manage to adopt someone who's not already fully grown-

Not prepared to follow that line of thinking any further, he plucks the device out of Radek's hand and slides it into the newly installed docking port behind his right ear without further ado and loses himself instead in the 01000011011000010110111001110100 01101001010000110101010101001101 01000001010101010101001001001111 010100100100000101000101, which is (SELECT ) so very different (FROM interfaces i) from before, where his firewalled laptop was the only data he had access to (WHERE = artificial intelligence). There's still no interface (AND EXISTS SELECT NULL), but there's so much 'more' now for him to take in and he has a sense of the code shifting and changing under his gaze that had been lacking before. Like the ship is trying to talk to him.

01010011010000010100110001010110 01000101010011010100111101010010 01000101010001000101010101000011 0101010101010011 (trans. Eng. "Hel-lo Mor-e-duc-us.") she says, and the rest is a blur he follows as best he can until deceleration maneuvers begin.

* * *

**10 December, 2006 / 37 Days After The Second Exodus - Atlantis, Lantea, Pegasus**

The universe is falling apart around him.

He can feel it expanding, a soft suggestion of terror in an otherwise ordinary room which makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end if he dwells on it for too long. Every second is putting another forty-four point one one seven miles per megaparsec between him and the home galaxy. No Alteran has ever been as far away from the origin of his species as Iohannes is now. None will ever break his record, because he is The Last. There are no more hidden away in stasis on forgotten 'lintres' or tucked away in dusty cities. He is the only one left. The utter end.

Pegasus itself is expanding too, even as he works to bring it closer than ever before. There are two hundred seventy-nine billion stars in the galaxy - seventy billion planets - eleven thousand, six hundred eighty-seven inhabited worlds - all of them flying apart from each other at speeds which make even the best hyperspace generator appear snail-like. Right now the Wraith threat unites them, but Iohannes has no idea what will keep his Confederation together when their enemies are finally defeated. Their common religion might be able to manage it, but he plans to be well and truly mortal again by that point and he sincerely doubts a religion can survive seeing its deity made flesh and blood.

Pegasus expands, even as it rushes towards its brethren in what the Terrans call the Local Group. In just under four billion years it will merge with the Andromeda Galaxy, which itself will collide with Avalon not long after. It promises to be spectacular, but Iohannes doesn't plan on being around to see it. Maybe then the Terrans will take an interest in Pegasus affairs, beyond what Atlantis can do for them. Atlantis is many things, but she's not some rubbish bin for other species to rummage through for forgotten treasures. There are enough abandoned Alteran colonies in Avalon for them to desecrate; let Atlantis be what she always should have been: the crowning jewel of the Alteran empire. A shinning star upon the ocean. A sanctuary and a school and a home.

Lantea is spinning about its star, about its axis. In twenty-three minutes, the sun will creep below the horizon. Danelia will have been dead for six-and-a-half hours then. The message her dead-man's program sent should have arrived at Asuras by that point. He has no idea what was in the message - Iohannes' understanding of programing languages is just about limited to making his mission reports for the SGC look presentable, - but he doubts it was something so kind as an auto-destruct sequence. No, in all likelihood the Asurans are preparing to annihilate the Descendants, just like Danelia always wanted, and he can't use the only weapon he has to stop them because he can't risk 'Lantis on those odds.

It's all threatening to fall apart.

It's all starting to come together.

Teyla's back and she brought a contingent of Athosians with her. They're working on renovating the rooms around the primary atrium in Tower Eleven, on the premise they can be transformed into shops for off-world merchants - a real marketplace, protected from the Wraith. He likes the idea even if the thought of so many unknowns in his city makes him more nervous than he would care to admit. Playing hostess has rarely worked out well for Atlantis in recent times.

Ronon's on Genia for the moment, forming the rubrics of the Argosy. Last Iohannes heard, things were going well, if slowly, as few planets in Pegasus have a tradition of an organized military. But the men and women of this galaxy are competent fighters already; what they lack is discipline and cohesion - and sophisticated weaponry. He has confidence in Ronon and his recruits. Even if their training seems to be going impossibly slowly.

And Rodney's coming home. Lorne and Rory will bring him back, along with the other Expedition members who are true Lanteans at heart, who'd begged him before the Second Exodus to find a way for them to say. People who'd known from the beginning that they just couldn't abandon Atlantis, that they were at least partly responsible for what was happening to the galaxy and that it was their duty to stay and fight. People who saw Atlantis for everything she truly is and loved her for it. They're all coming home.

Eventually.

It's hard to focus, knowing that any day now Rory could establish orbit around the planet and bring his 'amator' home. It's a nagging uncertainty, a worried tooth, and, if Iohannes allows himself to dwell on it, it could easily subsume all other cares. Logically, he knows that it was his idea to send Rodney away. Logically, he understands that he will return just as soon as he's physically able and not a second later. But...

But it's been difficult since his Ascension to find anything that will hold his attention for long. Books and movies and other Terran entertainments can manage it for a while, but novelty is key and his collection is terribly finite. Any idea that can capture his attention is immediately latched onto, for good or ill, and while he 'knows' that Rodney is coming home, there's still the worry he can't let go of: that Rodney 'won't' come home, that things will have changed between them already, that things will never be the same again. It's only been thirty-seven days, but even that can be a lifetime...

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. The universe is always changing, growing, spinning, expanding. The planets are turning, the stars are burning, and one day, far in the future, it will all be too much and it all will die a cold, quiet death. But until that day, change is inevitable, even for that which once seemed invincible.

But then 'Aurora' arrives. And when she lands and the gangplank is lowered, Rodney is the first one out, and there's no mistaking the joyous expression on his face, or the way his smile widens still further when Iohannes says, "Welcome home, buddy."


End file.
